Servant leaders prioritize the needs of other stakeholders—customers, shareholders, and direct reports—over their own. When it comes to hiring and employee development, this management approach focuses on maximizing the abilities, potential, and wellbeing of direct reports.

How does a management philosophy focused on service to others lead to economic growth and improved productivity? By focusing on increasing value for all stakeholders, servant leaders create a culture that fosters happier and more highly motivated employees and more satisfied and evangelical customers.

Foundations of Servant Leadership

Following a decades-long career in management with AT&T, author Robert Greenleaf introduced the servant leader as manager in his 1970 essay “The Servant as Leader” where he argued that some of the most effective business leaders intuitively employed this stakeholder-focused practice to nurture successful teams and organizations.

This ran counter to the more established management theories of the day, which often claimed that the best way to build a successful business was to hire executives whose personal ambitions would motivate them to demand higher levels of productivity from their employees. In contrast, Greenleaf argued that the best business leaders he had worked with had been generous mentors motivated more by external values, such as customer value or ethical business practice, than by personal gain.

The five habits below highlight some of the key traits of servant leaders. By developing these management strategies, you can leverage some of the most useful aspects of servant leadership to strengthen your team’s cohesion, help your employees reach their fullest potential, and accomplish your business goals.

1. Focus on Persuasion and Buy-in

A servant leader doesn’t rely on their hierarchical position to motivate their team or issue commands. Instead, they elicit input, empowering their direct reports to make decisions and take risks when appropriate, and use persuasion to create buy in on teamwide actions.

To achieve this, servant leaders tend to be excellent communicators who know how to use to help make the technical accessible for customers and C-suite priorities tangible to customer-facing and in-the-trenches employees.

2. Prioritize Stakeholders

As a manager, servant leaders are power sharers rather than power holders. They tend to favor decentralized organizational structure over highly hierarchical teams. Their main aim as supervisors is to nurture the talents and leadership potential of colleagues and direct reports. When these leaders work in sales or product development they are apt to encourage a customer-first approach in their employees and look for this quality in their hiring. They pay attention to how they communicate these values, underscoring a team approach by using “we” and “us” rather than “you” and “me.”

3. Promote Employee Wellbeing

Business owners and executives who adhere to servant leadership principles invest in initiatives designed to promote employee wellbeing and workplace wellness, such as paid time off (PTO), robust health benefits, and access to employee assistance programs (EAP). Middle managers may not have as much power to implement these policies, but they can advocate for them. In the meantime, they maximize the tools they do have to support their direct reports through crisis and encourage self-care.

A servant leader can be particularly effective in fortifying the resiliency of organizations and those who work for them during times of crisis. There are significant overlaps between crisis management best practices and stakeholder-focused leadership.

4. Serve as an Ally

As workforce managers, leaders who practice servant leadership see their role as nurturing rather than transactional. For this reason, they are likely to meet one-on-one with employees more often than other leaders, and to spend those meetings focusing on the employees’ goals, capabilities, and challenges. In response, they are likely to invest in upskilling to ensure employees have the skills they need to advance and reach their full potential.

These leaders often serve as mentors, sponsors, and allies to those in the workforce who have traditionally faced challenges. For example, a servant leader might be particularly attuned to advancing the career of an employee who is the first in their family to graduate from college and attain, and therefore need to navigate, a professional role and career path. Similarly, they might be more likely than other managers to want to contribute to their company’s diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.

5. Elicit Ample Employee Feedback

Once you’ve started employing these practices, you can use frequent employee feedback via anonymous surveys to learn what is working and where you need to improve your approach. You can also use in-person feedback to drive collaboration, innovation, and risk-taking.

When Servant Leadership Make Sense—and When It Doesn’t

Organizations with community-focused missions, such as medical technology, and customer-focused sectors like retail are natural candidates for a service management approach. But not all fields lend themselves to this management style. For example, a servant leader might tend to be less effective than a leader with a more direct approach in a high-stakes situation that calls for quick decision making. Emergency rooms and battlefields come to mind.

These leaders also need to be cautious that their tendency to protect their direct reports from outside criticism isn’t preventing their team members from the learning and growth that comes from accountability. Most managers will need to combine a servant approach with leadership styles and management approaches to meet all the expectations of their leadership role.

For example, a revered doctor may serve as a servant leader, exemplifying patient care and helping medical students and junior staff learn how to implement best practices in both the technical aspects of medicine and bedside manner. But that same leader may need to periodically exercise a more direct style to direct her team to implement an emergency procedure where seconds count.

But in most environments, the approach can be effective, and if you happen to be a manager with excellent listening skills, a high level of empathy, and a desire to help others reach their potential, adopting a service management style may prove to be transformative for your organization.

Learn More About Effective Leadership and Management Best Practices

Now that you understand how servant leadership improves employee performance and boosts retention rates, learn about other strategies than can help you grow your business, such as the latest hiring news and management how-tos.

The post How to Implement Servant Leadership appeared first on Monster.com.

The short answer for most employers is yes. The longer answer is that there are some circumstances when it makes sense to reduce employee compensation to avert even harsher cost-cutting measures, but only temporarily and only after you’ve considered all the possible unintended consequences that come with cutting pay.

When It’s Okay for an Employer to Cut Pay?

Pay cuts should not be an answer to a short-term drop in profits. Nor do they make sense in the face of an unavoidable long-term downturn in your business. Your organizational strategy should account for short-term cashflow challenges. Longer term sales challenges are better addressed through staff reductions or a shift in strategy.

However, cutting wages temporarily may be the appropriate answer to prevent severe losses from adversely affecting your company’s viability — but only if the alternative is layoffs or going out of business.

How do you know when to consider cutting employee pay? First, calculate your current staffing costs and then, based on revenue forecasts, determine whether you can withstand expected losses and still maintain your current payroll. If honoring your current compensation levels means you might need to let staff go, then it may make sense to see if you can maintain your current staff levels at slightly decreased wages.

If you think a temporary decrease in compensation costs might help you keep your doors open, then it’s time to create a plan for how to communicate and implement pay cuts.

Legal Considerations

If your workers are part of a collective bargaining agreement or working under the provisions of a contract, you may be prohibited from cutting pay, hours, or benefits. Doing so could incur penalties or make you vulnerable to a lawsuit or other legal action.

However, most employees are at-will, which means that the employer, or the employee, can end or alter the relationship at any point for almost any reason. So, technically, if you do not have an existing contract with a unionized workforce, you can reduce your employees’ compensation — wages, benefits, and performance-based incentives — if you adhere to the following conditions:

• You announce the pay cut before you implement it. Keep in mind that the amount of notification required differs by state.
• You do not make the reduction retroactively.
• You do not reduce earnings of hourly employees below the national minimum wage or your state’s minimum wage.
• You do not exempt workers’ salaries below the federal or state threshold below which they would need to be redefined as hourly wage workers.
• You do not reduce salaries in a discriminatory manner based on a worker’s protected status, such as race, gender, or disability, or implement wage reductions in a way that exacerbates existing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) issues.
• You are not cutting pay as a punishment for taking time off to perform protected activities, such as jury duty, taking family leave, or military service.
• You are not retaliating against an employee for whistleblowing, organizing a collective bargaining unit, or acting as an employee representative for union.
• You give each employee the opportunity to agree to the reduction or resign.

Why Employee Pay Cuts Are Not Usually the Answer

In most cases, pay reductions are not a long-term solution to profit loss or poor performance, as they tend to:

• Negatively affect morale, decrease productivity, and further depress profits.
• Erode trust between workers and management.
• Prompt your best performers to look elsewhere for opportunities, possibly to your competition.
• Damage your employer brand and company culture.

The Problem With Across-the-Board Pay Cuts

Your business plan should be flexible enough to withstand a short-term dip in profits without necessitating layoffs or pay cuts. If your instinct is to cut compensation whenever times are tough, the message your frontline workers will take away is that they — rather than owners and top-level management — are the only ones making sacrifices for the benefit of the business’s overall health.

The Problem With Targeted Pay Cuts

You want your workplace to be a place where hard workers can thrive. Reducing pay communicates that your financial situation is unstable or that struggling employees will be penalized rather than supported. Either way, pay cuts are likely to cost you your highest achieving employees.

Offering support, upskilling, mentoring, and changing team and individual assignments are much better ways to improve the performance of an employee who is failing to reach their potential. If you have a problem employee who has very little chance of thriving in your company culture or your industry sector, or one who behaves in an unethical manner, termination is a better way to address the situation than a punitive pay cut.

If you decide to go forward with a targeted pay reduction it should be accompanied by a reduction in responsibilities or demotion. Asking an employee to do the same work for less pay is not likely to incentivize increased effort or performance.

How to Implement a Salary Reduction

As with a targeted pay cut to an individual employee, companywide pay cuts should be temporary and accompanied by a reduction in responsibilities. You should discuss the reductions with staff ahead of time and distribute a written announcement that outlines the terms of the compensation adjustment.

For example, you might keep base salaries at their current level but suspend bonuses. You may also want to specify that the reinstatement of previous compensation practices will be contingent upon a return to previous profitability levels or a change in economic conditions.

Cost-cutting Alternatives

Rather than implement wage reductions, consider offering your employees the following options that can help to temporarily — or even permanently — reduce payroll:

• Offer furloughs in the form of voluntary or mandatory time off during times that are less busy or that work well for each employee. Some employees may even welcome unpaid time off to focus on family obligations, educational opportunities, or extended vacations.
• Allow sabbaticals of various intervals, from a few months to a year, to pursue educational, volunteer, or other opportunities.
• Institute job sharing for employees who want to work part-time for the short term to fulfill caregiving obligations or pursue educational opportunities.
• Create a remote work policy to reduce overhead costs.

You may also want to consider filling critical openings with part-time or contract workers, at least for the duration of your current financial challenges.

How to Soften the Blow

If you are asking your workforce to sacrifice wages you should be prepared to offer something in return. You might focus on other aspects of your and more affordable incentives, such as making an extra effort to highlight workers’ performance, throwing an office party to thank people for their efforts, or working with community partners to provide gift certificates in lieu of cash bonuses for the near term.

You might also look to other non-monetary forms of compensation, such as increased paid time off (PTO) or offering top performers an equity stake in the company.

Learn More Ways to Reduce Costs Without Making a Pay Cut

Now that you know when an employer can cut employee pay, and how to temper the blow, learn about more ways to grow your bottom line, from crisis management to the latest hiring news and expert how-tos.

Legal disclaimer: None of the information provided herein constitutes legal advice on behalf of Monster.

The post When Can an Employer Make a Pay Cut? appeared first on Monster.com.

Workplaces with high levels of engagement enjoy 23 percent higher profits than those with low levels of engagement, and it’s an HR manager’s job to facilitate every aspect of the employee experience to maximize engagement from talent acquisition and onboarding to professional development to offboarding, and everything in between.

Modern human resource management is focused on the elements of employee management most likely to affect your bottom line: talent acquisition, retention, and engagement.

HR Management: Getting Started

A small company may have a single HR professional overseeing all HR functions. At larger organizations, HR is likely to be a multitiered department with individual managers focusing on various aspects of human resource management, including talent acquisition, compensation and benefits management, labor relations and union negotiations, engagement and training, and employee safety and government compliance.

But what if you’re a startup or local retailer with a small staff? Is it possible to function efficiently and legally without a dedicated HR manager? Yes, as long as someone on staff takes ownership of this important function and utilizes tools and platforms designed to help facilitate employee management. Many HR platforms can be accessed via tiered subscription rates based on the size of your company, with lower fees for small firms. Another option is to engage an HR consulting service.

The following information covers all the basics you need to know if you need to hire for, manage, or undertake your company’s HR strategy.

How To Make Human Resource Management a Revenue Driver

Your HR department’s main focus should be helping your organization achieve its core mission by maximizing the potential of its workforce. That is why

Effective HR professionals know how to maximize organizational earning potential by taking the lead on employee development and upskilling, team building, engagement, and succession and contingency planning.

How HR Resource Management Has Changed

Until recently, many companies saw HR as a necessary cost rather than a vital revenue-generating department. For decades human resource managers were referred as “personnel” professionals. They tended to focus on the well-being of employees, and serve as benefits administrators and payroll and paperwork processors.

So, what changed? For one, modern workplace analytics can now accurately track the costs associated with employee churn and the revenue benefits of healthy employee retention and engagement strategies. Tech tools have allowed HR to become more integral to the revenue-generating functions of the companies they work for: staying apprised of labor laws, mitigating liability, maximizing employee engagement and productivity, and strategically planning workforce expansion and transition.

The change in terminology from “personnel” to “human resources management” and even “human capital management” reflects this view of HR as more aligned with revenue generation than the benefits and policy administration departments of old.

Human Resource Management Functions

HR professionals are your inhouse experts on how to hire employees, train them, pay them, engage them, and retain them. The following functions are among the most common areas your HR department can optimize through their expertise and leadership.

Talent Acquisition

Talent acquisition includes all aspects of recruiting, candidate vetting and interviewing, and hiring. They write and update job descriptions, determine hiring policies and procedures, develop talent pipelines, assess and finetune budgets, and forecast expected revenue increases and talent gaps to determine whether an organization will need and can afford new hires.

Onboarding and Training

HR departments are responsible for determining and implementing new employees’ onboarding experience in ways that help convey and maintain your company culture and core values. They should also be involved in assessing

Engagement, Productivity, and Employee Development

Your human resource team should work to make sure employee policies and operations run as smoothly as possible and that employees are developing in ways that optimize their efficiency and creates maximum benefit for the company.

Performance Reviews

Human resource management includes regularly scheduled and well-regulated performance reviews with clearly stated and easily measurable goals, including administering disciplinary action when necessary. Your HR team can help guide and implement an equitable and transparent professional development and promotion process.

Compensation

HR should oversee salary negotiations, the distribution of wages and bonuses, and benefits management.

Compliance

From ensuring worker safety as determined by the federal department of Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to adhering to negotiated labor contracts, your HR team helps to mitigate liability by establishing ethical management policies. In this capacity, HR personnel often work closely with safety engineers, policies and labor representatives and attorneys, and keep up to date with all federal, state, and local labor laws to avert lawsuits and fines.

They also make sure your company is adhering to laws governing how candidates are recruited and hired, how many hours they work, and under what conditions. They also work to create an equitable and inclusive workplace.

HR Tools You May Need

Investing in the following tech tools can help a small or even one-person HR department function more efficiently:

• Human Resources Management System (HRMS), also referred to as Human Resources Information Systems (HRIS), are all-in-one systems designed to take care of HR needs from onboarding to offboarding.
• Strategic Workplace Planning tools track current workforce skills and anticipate future talent needs.
• Performance Trackers can range from self-evaluations to management tracking or digital tracking of time spent on workplace networks.
• Recruiting Tools, including applicant tracking systems (ATS), are designed to streamline the recruitment process for both hiring managers and applicants, implement and assess skills testing, schedule interviews, and track the hiring process from start to finish.
• Onboarding and Digital Training Software can facilitate new employee training, self-guided tutorials, skills building and even credentialing.
• Compensation Planning Tools can help make sure you’re crafting competitive compensation packages and distributing them equitably. Benefits management software and payroll software are subsets of this category.

What to Look for in an HR Manager

If you’re looking to establish or expand your HR department, you’ll want to look for the following traits in your next human resources manager or specialist hire:

• Business strategy and resource management
• Excellent written and spoken communication
• Forecasting and budgeting
• Interpersonal and conflict resolution
• Presentation and public speaking skills
• Teambuilding, leadership, and mentoring
• Training and/or educational experience
• Professional in Human Resources (PHR) or Senior Professional Human Resources (SPHR) certification from the Society of Human Resources Management (SHRM) or Human Resources Certification Institute (HRCI)

Beyond HR Management Basics: Learn More Ways to Get the Most from Your Workforce

Now that you understand the shifting priorities of modern human resource management, learn more ways to maximize productivity with the latest hiring tips from recruitment and management experts.

The post What is Human Resource Management? appeared first on Monster.com.

Types of Work Presentations

Giving a presentation is a great way to model public speaking best practices for your staff. Here’s how to handle some common public speaking scenarios.

You Have to Deliver Bad News

You may need to meet with your employees to let them know that profits are down, or that an ongoing crisis has come to light that might affect the company’s bottom line. You may even need to deliver the bad news that raises are on hold or layoffs are eminent.

You may fear that delivering negative information about your company’s performance will cost you top performers. But waiting until bad news trickles through the ranks is likely to drive even more defections. Instead, embrace transparency by delivering bad news as quickly and clearly as you can. Show empathy, focus on your core values, and give your audience time to process the news. End with positive information, even if it’s simply that you will be providing severance and laid off workers.

You Get to Deliver Good News

This is every manager’s favorite type of work presentation—getting to announce that:

• A new product has been developed and growth is expected.
• Sales are strong and revenue is up.
• You’re expanding operations and adding staff.
• Raises and bonuses are coming soon.

Onboarding and New Employee Orientation

When the boss welcomes new hires onboard and makes the company’s core values clear, it can help cement engagement in a way that feels personal and positive. Team leaders, department heads, even top-level company leaders can share:

• Your company’s history and legacy
• Key aspects of your company culture
• Overall mission and core values
• Recent achievements and current goals
• A description of your organizational structure along with an up-to-date org chart.

Upskilling and Course Correction

On the-job-training can help you fill key openings with internal candidates and show that you are invested in your employees’ success. There are a number of ways to provide upskilling to your workforce, including having managers deliver seminars to employees.

Another scenario where hearing directly from the boss can be effective is when your company is adopting a new strategy or making a course correction. This might include informing your staff about:

• A new management or leadership structure.
• A major shift in offerings or product line.
• A new sales or marketing strategy.

In-person vs. Remote Presentations

Some work presentation best practices are constant, whether you’re delivering information to employees in person or online. However, each environment has its own variables to take into consideration.

In-person Presentation Best Practices

• Check out the room where you will be giving the presentation ahead of time.
• Practice with the equipment, if possible.
• Memorize your opening and closing lines so you can make eye contact as you deliver them.

Online Presentation Best Practices

• Check the lighting. Check your image on the screen before you go live to make sure that your face isn’t in shadow. You may need to close the shades or set up the screen in a different part of the room.
• Curate the background. Stand or sit in front of an attractive design element, such as a bookshelf or work of art.
• Plug your laptop directly into your modem to secure the strongest signal possible.
• Appoint someone to monitor the chat, so you can focus on the information you need to share.

5 Tips That Can Improve Any Presentation

1. Think About Your Audience

Effective management communication drives employee engagement by focusing on how the information you are sharing affects your workforce. For example, if you are sharing good news about company revenue, be sure you explain how an uptick in earnings will benefit it.

• Keep it simple. The longer and more complicated you make your presentation, the less your audience is likely to retain. Don’t jam too much information onto each presentation slide. Keep the type large and legible, with plenty of white space. You can always follow up with more details later.
• Use visual elements. Incorporate graphs, charts, and videos, as well as interactive elements such as multiple-choice questions at the end of each section.
• Speak slowly and take breaks. Nerves tend to make people speak more quickly, so keep reminding yourself to speak slowly. During your work presentation, pause from time to time to check in with your audience and make sure they are keeping up.
• Avoid jargon. Use conversational language and active verbs. Yes, you can use some sector-specific terms with a specialized professional audience, but don’t let it get out of hand—no alphabet soup!

2. Write a Strong Script

You don’t want to read word-for-word from a script, but you should plan out what you will say by creating a detailed outline or storyboard.

3. Make a Good Start

Grab your audience’s attention by asking a question or sharing an anecdote. Your introduction should also set the expectation for the rest of your presentation: how long it will last, what will be covered, and how will it be formatted.

4. Tell a Good Story

Consider presenting the information you want to convey in the form of a narrative arc with a beginning, middle, and end, keeping in mind the elements of good storytelling, including:

• A protagonist or hero. This might be a customer or client, a member of your staff, someone from your audience, or you.
• An inciting incident. This is an event that takes place early in your story that sets your protagonist on their quest.
• Challenges and obstacles. These are the problems that stand between your hero and their goals.
• Turning point and resolution. Your protagonist has reached a turning point once they’ve found a successful resolution to their primary obstacle.

5. End Strong

When we listen to a speech, it’s often the final words spoken that remain in our minds days later. Make sure your presentation’s key takeaways appear in your final slide. Better yet, end with a call to action.

If you want to end with a question-and-answer period, don’t ask, “Do you have any questions?” Instead, ask, “What questions do you have?” Or even, “I’ll take a maximum of two questions from each audience member” (and then allow more if there’s time).

Humor and Even Errors Can Work to Your Advantage

There’s no such thing as a perfectly delivered presentation. Errors and technical issues are inevitable. But, as the boss, you can leverage your mistakes into opportunities to bond with your staff.

Small gaffes can provide opportunities to employ self-deprecating humor and underscore that in your workplace, care and effort are expected, but perfection is seldom in the cards (or slides)—even when the boss is the one whose work is on display.

You’ve Mastered the Work Presentation. Now Learn About More Management Best Practices

Now that you know how to deliver a perfectly polished work presentation to your employees, get more management how-tos, exclusive hiring news, and expert advice from Monster.

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Now that you know the benefits of collecting and acting on employee feedback, you’re probably wondering how to get honest responses from your team. Here’s how to create an effective survey.

How to Create Your Employee Survey

It’ helpful to have a mix of written, verbal, anonymous, and non-anonymous surveys. You may want to create several types of employee feedback survey, including:

• Employee Engagement Surveys. These surveys will help you assess how engaged your team members are and how you can improve their work experience.
• Employee Pulse Surveys. These surveys usually cover one topic at a time, such as satisfaction with compensation and benefits; diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives; or career advancement opportunities. These surveys are typically short and easy to fill out, meaning you can send them more frequently and see the impact of any changes you made based on previous feedback.
• Exit Interviews. People are prone to give constructive criticism when they’ve handed in their two weeks’ notice. Ask employees for feedback about their roles and work experience before they head out the door.
• Stay Interviews. Unlike exit interviews, stay interviews give you the opportunity to make changes that can keep your employees from quitting. Ask employees about their favorite and least favorite things about their job and working at the company.
• One-on-One Meetings. Have managers conduct regular one-on-one meetings with their direct reports to share feedback, ask for feedback on their role and responsibilities and the company culture, and discuss projects and goals.

How to Make the Most of Your Surveys

Use your employee feedback survey to ask questions about a variety of topics. You may want to cover the company culture, compensation and benefits, professional development initiatives, career advancement opportunities, diversity and inclusion programs, and job responsibilities so you know what your employees want and can make meaningful improvements. In addition to open-ended questions, ask quick-response questions like yes-or-no and scale questions.

Make it clear that constructive criticism is welcome and that employees won’t be penalized for sharing negative feedback. Employees may be less forthcoming in-person, so have some of the written surveys be anonymous.

Sample Employee Feedback Survey Questions

Ready to get started? Here are some sample questions you can use to get actionable feedback.

1. How would you describe the company culture? What could be improved?
2. How would you rate our professional development initiatives? Are there more resources that would help you achieve your goals?
3. Do you think there is a clear and equitable promotion process? If not, what could be better?
4. What are your main short- and long-term professional goals? What support and resources would help you reach them faster?
5. Do you know the skills and achievements you need to get promoted?
6. Do you think people are more collaborative or competitive? What could be done to increase teamwork?
7. How would you rate your relationship with your manager? What could be improved?
8. What do you like about your role and responsibilities? Are there any responsibilities you’d like to add or remove?
9. How would you rate your satisfaction with your compensation and benefits?
10. Are there any additional benefits you’d like to have? If so, what would be beneficial?
11. What perks and HR policies — such as hybrid work, flextime, and a compressed work week — would improve your work experience?
12. How likely are you to look for a new job?
13. If you’re currently job searching or considering job searching, what is your main motivation for switching companies?
14. How would you rate the leadership team? How could the team improve?
15. Do you have a clear understanding of the company’s quarterly goals and current performance?
16. How would you rate our diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts? What could be improved?
17. Would you recommend our company to a friend? Why or why not?

Continue to Improve Your Company Culture

If you make changes based on what you learn from each employee feedback survey, you’re likely to see improved productivity, work quality, and employee retention. Keep on strengthening your company with hiring and management advice from Monster.

The post How to Create an Employee Feedback Survey appeared first on Monster.com.

Yet, 36 percent of employees report that they are not aware of any avenues for providing feedback to their employers. Using a variety of employee feedback collection methods is an effective way to show how much you value your workers’ input.

Benefits of Employee Feedback

The best employee feedback programs drive organizational development and improvement. Frontline employees often have a better sense of what customers want from your services and products. You never know when an employee in your midst is sitting on a great idea that could lead to improved efficiency or a great new idea for product development⁠ — unless you ask them.

To foster an environment where employees feel safe giving you their honest feedback, you need to assure them that their feedback will be considered and acted upon. One of the best ways to convince your workforce of your commitment to employee feedback is to share the data you derive from all methods of employee data collection with them.

This means that data needs to be collected in ways that allow for easy-to-understand reporting on results, for example, you’re more likely to be alerted to potential problems and learn of possible workplace improvements if you provide a variety of employee feedback collection methods throughout the year.

Avenues to Report Potential Wrongdoing

The best work environments stay that way by providing employees with ways to report wrongdoing. This includes providing opportunities to alert leadership about issues ranging from unethical business practices to failures on issues like diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) or gender-based harassment, which data suggests affects at least 50 percent of women in the workplace during any given year.

An effective whistleblower policy should include several ways for employees to come forward when they fear that something damaging is going on within your organization, including anonymous avenues to express concern. Another great way to take the internal pulse of your organization is to establish employee resource groups (ERGs). Also, referred to as affinity groups, these collections of employees meet independent of leadership to address crucial issues, such as wellness or DEI. ERGs are often tasked with collecting feedback from coworkers and presenting it to senior leadership.

Employee Feedback Collection Methods

New Employee Surveys

Early encouragement to give candid feedback sets the tone for newly hired employees, dispelling any hint that yours is a workplace that operates in secrecy, but rather one that encourages candor, transparency, and the open exchange of ideas without fear of penalty.

New employees have a unique vantage point within your company because they are less enmeshed in the culture and more likely to see things early on in their tenure that they would be likely to miss or take for granted once they become more integrated into your way of doing things.

Pulse Surveys

One increasingly popular employee feedback collection method is pulse surveys, frequent short surveys typically on targeted topics. You can promote them as a way to break up the workday. Their frequency helps to foster a culture of feedback and reinforces your commitment to hearing from workers at all levels. You can also track how employee viewpoints on key issues evolve over time and share your findings with employees in newsletters and on your workplace website.

One-on-One Manager Meetings

Results from these employee feedback collection methods are likely to be more qualitative and narrative than quantitative, but you can still integrate yes-no and ranked answer questions into documentation for these meetings that will allow you to gather quantifiable data that can be analyzed across departments and over time to look for patterns and track feedback.

In addition to performance reviews, encourage managers to hold brief weekly or biweekly check-ins with their direct reports, where, in addition to determining status on work projects, they make sure to ask about issues of wellness and engagement.

Employee Suggestions

Consider installing a prominent tab on your intranet to remind employees that they can make suggestions at any time. You may even want to work with IT to allow employees the option of either sending an anonymous suggestion or taking full credit for their ideas. Or you can go the more traditional route of placing boxes at multiple locations throughout your workplace, with plenty of pens and notepads nearby.

Management Surveys

Make it clear to your management ranks that feedback is essential. This includes gathering feedback from across various management levels and assuring managers that this feedback will be seriously considered by senior leadership. Make sure that a key member of your leadership team takes ownership of gathering and acting on feedback to signal the importance of these initiatives at every level of your organization.

Stay and Exit Interviews

As disappointing as it is to learn that a valued employee is considering an offer from another employer, these situations can also present an opportunity for implementing candid, useful employee feedback collection methods.

When top performers express a desire to leave your company, set up stay interviews. Ask if there is anything you can provide that might make them consider remaining. You can also schedule stay interviews for long-valued employees to learn what aspects of your workplace are keeping them there, as well as any changes they’d like to see implemented to head them off from ever wanting to walk out the door.

If they cannot be persuaded to stay, these stay interviews can evolve into exit interviews and thus opportunities to speak candidly about elements of your workplace that might be improved upon for your remaining employees and future hires.

Learn How to Act on Employee Feedback to Improve Hiring and Retention

Once you institute a variety of employee feedback collection methods, learn more about how to implement the latest hiring and management methods to optimize your retention and recruitment strategies.

The post Types of Employee Feedback Collection Methods appeared first on Monster.com.

You can also use the software to track unexcused absences so you spot any absenteeism issues like getting to work late, leaving early, taking long breaks, or not showing up. If left unchecked, widespread absenteeism can lead to decreased profitability, morale, and retention.

Before choosing software, it’s important to set your paid time off (PTO) and attendance policies. (As with any HR policy, it’s beneficial to have an employment lawyer review them before you add them to your employee handbook.) After that, you’re ready to select software. Here’s how to set up your system.

Step 1: Create a PTO Policy

In the United States, there are no federal or state laws mandating that employers provide paid vacation days and there are no federal laws requiring paid sick leave. However, be sure to check your state and local laws. Regardless of the laws, many companies provide PTO to recruit and retain top talent.

Some companies have a set number of PTO days that employees can use for any reason, some designate a set number of vacation or sick days, and others offer unlimited PTO. Some companies offer the same number of days to all employees or a different amount based on tenure.

When you’re writing your policy, be sure to include how far in advance employees must request planned time off like vacations and the process for requesting it. You could also mention reasons why PTO might be denied.

You may want to give additional paid time off for bereavement, parental leave, and family emergencies. Consider noting that any leave approved under the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and any other relevant federal, state, and local laws do not count as PTO days.

Step 2: Set an Attendance Policy

The next step to creating an absence management system is to make an attendance policy. Some companies track excused and unexcused absences. If you track excused and unexcused absences, specify what counts as each. For example, it may be an excused absence if it can count toward their remaining PTO, or if it was approved in advance.

Some companies count coming late, leaving early, or taking long breaks as absences or count multiple instances toward one absence. You may want to note the number of unexcused absences employees can have in a set time frame and the repercussions because it can be helpful if someone files a wrongful termination claim.

Step 3: Choose an Absence Management System

Now you’re ready to select software. There are several different software options. Here are some of the main features you may want to look for:

• Employees can request time off and log sick days.
• Employees can clock in and out and log hours, if necessary.
• Managers can approve and deny time off requests.
• Managers can log unexcused absences.
• Managers and department heads can create shift schedules, if relevant.
• Department heads and HR employees can see the team coverage to track trends.
• HR employees can send reports to payroll if employees are paid hourly or receive overtime.
• Managers and HR employees can check compliance laws.

Step 4: Reduce Absenteeism

If you notice that your team has high absenteeism rates, it can be helpful to implement flexible work arrangements such as:

• Flextime. Employees set their own hours outside of the traditional 9-to-5 schedule.
• Compressed work week. Employees work more hours a few days a week to hit 40 hours faster and take the remaining days off.
• Remote work. Depending on your policy, employees work remotely whenever they want or a set number of days per week.
• Part-time roles and shift work. Offering part-time roles and shift work can help you attract and retain people who want or need to work nontraditional hours, such as students and parents.

Continue to Learn HR Best Practices

Your absence management system can help you save time, stay organized, and monitor absenteeism. If absenteeism is an issue, the tips for reducing it can increase productivity, employee morale, and retention, making your business more successful. Keep on improving your business by implementing expert hiring and management advice from Monster.

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(Keep in mind that federal employees, some state employees, and eligible government contractors must pay for specific holidays. It’s also important to check your state’s laws because some states, such as Massachusetts and Rhode Island, require private employers to pay for holidays.)

If you have the option of providing paid holidays, these tips can help you set your policy. Like with any policy, it can be helpful to have an employment lawyer review it before you add it to your employee handbook.

Benefits of Offering Holiday Pay for Hourly Employees

Although you may not be required to pay salaried and hourly employees for holidays and vacations, many businesses do so to stay competitive. It can help you recruit and retain top talent and boost employee morale and engagement. Research shows that companies with high employee engagement often have higher profits because of factors including better productivity, work quality, customer loyalty, and employee retention.

Step 1: Determine Your Paid Holidays

Once you’ve decided to give holiday pay for hourly employees, your first step is to decide which holidays you’ll pay employees for even when they take the day off. For example, you may choose to pay employees for all the federal holidays or for the most common paid holidays. According to the compensation data resource Payscale, the most recognized paid holidays for private companies are:

1. New Year’s Day
2. Easter
3. Memorial Day
4. Independence Day
5. Labor Day
6. Thanksgiving
7. Day after Thanksgiving
8. Christmas

Many companies also give paid time off on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Presidents’ Day, Veteran’s Day, Good Friday, Christmas Eve, and New Year’s Eve, per Payscale. Some companies offer “in lieu” of days when there’s a holiday over the weekend. For example, if a holiday falls on a Sunday, your employees would get a paid day off on Monday.

Step 2: Create a Process for Requesting Religious Holidays Off

Under Title VII of the Civil Right Act, employers are prohibited from discriminating against candidates and employees because of their religious beliefs. Employers must accommodate a candidate’s religious beliefs unless it would cause an “undue hardship” for the business, meaning it would be a “significant difficulty or expense.” While it’s likely you must give employees the day off for major religious holidays, you can decide whether you will still pay them for the day.

If you offer holiday pay for hourly employees, you may want to offer a certain number of “floating” holidays so employees can get paid for religious holidays that are important to them.

Step 3: Choose a Pay Model for Paid Holidays

If you decide to provide holiday pay for employees who take the day off, you’ll likely pay them their regular rate. However, you may want to pay employees more when they work on holidays. There are three common pay models:

• Regular rate. If you choose this model, you’d pay employees their regular hourly rate.
• Time-and-a-half. You’d pay employees their regular hourly rate and an additional half the amount. For example, if your employee’s hourly rate is $30, you’d pay them an extra $15 for the hour, amounting to $45 an hour.
• Double pay. You’d pay employees double their hourly rate. If they normally get $30 an hour, they’d be paid $60 an hour for working on a holiday.

Continue to Learn Hiring and Management Best Practices

Now you know the benefits of providing holiday pay for hourly employees and salaried employees and how to set your policy. Continue to strengthen your company with expert hiring and management advice from Monster.

Legal Disclaimer: None of the information provided herein constitutes legal advice on behalf of Monster.

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Research indicates that structure is critical to your bottom line and your talent acquisition and retention efforts. Organizations with clearly defined structures outperform those that don’t across a variety of indicators, including return on investment, sales, revenue, and productivity.

What Is Organizational Structure and Why Is It Important?

All organizations and teams have a structure, whether they know it or not. How job functions and chains of authority are defined and set up in relation to one another make up your organization’s structure. Whether it’s top-down with highly centralized, formally defined chains of management, or more informal and decentralized with autonomous personnel each in charge of their own projects, it’s critical that your division of labor and chain of command be clearly understood by all contributors.

Companies with well-defined organizational structures tend to benefit from better cross-department communication and higher rates of efficiency and overall productivity. With fewer people uncertain about what their role entails and who they need to consult with when something goes wrong, operations run more smoothly.

The Hallmarks of Effective Structure

Which structure you choose is far less important than whether you choose one that makes the most sense for your company’s particular goals, workforce, size and scope, and industry or sector.

An effective organizational structure needs to be:

• Responsive to changes in technology, the marketplace, and within your industry or sector.
• Adaptable to changes in strategy or direction within your organization, such as those required when you develop a whole new product line or change your sales or distribution model.
• Well matched to your company’s values, mission, and workforce.

There is no one-size-fits-all structure that delivers optimum results for every business in every sector. Instead, management experts emphasize that your structure should be carefully considered, well planned, and clearly communicated across all levels of your workforce. It’s also important to keep in mind that your structure may need to be revised or even entirely replaced as your business grows from a small startup to a midsized competitor to a large-scale employer.

The following five structures are among the most popular.

1. Hierarchical Organizational Structure

This is the most prevalent structure and likely the one you are most familiar with, featuring a single individual, usually a CEO or president at the top, supported by a small number of C-suite executives at the next level with increasing numbers of individuals at each layer of descending authority. Sometimes referred to as a line structure, it works well for large companies that rely on a high level of centralized authority.

Typically, everyone knows where they fit in and what their responsibilities are in this type of structure. They also have a clear path ahead of them if they want to move up the chain of command, which can be a very effective motivator for many employees. At the same time, this type of org chart can lead to high levels of bureaucracy slowing decision-making and responsiveness, and even hindering innovation.

2. Divisional Structures

Organizations that utilize divisional organization models are highly siloed with each business unit within a larger company controlling resources and determining management priorities with little coordination with other units. Sometimes referred to as multidivisional (or M-Form), this type of structure often includes duplication of functions across divisions with each unit having its own dedicated marketing and sales teams, IT department, HR, and so forth.

Whether the divisions are organized by market sector, product line, or geographic region, arranging business hierarchies this way allows business units that reside within large corporations to be more adaptable than they might be if they had to wait for the go-ahead on every decision from powerful centralized stakeholders. It can also encourage healthy competition between divisions, prompting optimal performance from each.

3. Functional Organization

While the first two business configurations tend to be found at large companies, a functional organizational structure can be very effective for mid-sized companies. Though it is still top-down, management roles and department affiliation in a functionally aligned company are divided by job type, professional specialization, or role within the lifecycle of the business’s production and sales process.

This role-based composition makes sense for highly technical firms or for business endeavors that require a diverse range of highly trained professionals. However, as with a divisional model, functional teams can become siloed and even negatively competitive when it comes to securing resources. You may need to work hard with this type of structure to encourage cross-functional and interdepartmental cooperation and collegiality.

4. Team-based Structures

This type of workplace configuration has become increasingly popular over the past few decades, as more companies have come to recognize the value of diverse perspectives when it comes to problem-solving. A team approach often brings together small groups of specialists with professional backgrounds to develop new products, propose management solutions, or devise ways to capitalize on the opportunities presented by new technology. Though these teams are often led by a team leader, point person, or project manager, they tend to function collaboratively, with even junior members of the team being encouraged to bring new ideas to the table.

Many of today’s team-based practices have been influenced by the 2001 Agile Manifesto, a document assembled by a group of engineers urging a departure from more traditional, bureaucracy-heavy organizational principles in favor of a smaller, swifter, problem-focused approach to product development. The Agile management movement has led to the proliferation of team-based, project-focused business practice, as well the development of highly prevalent software, such as Scrum and Slack, designed with Agile principles in mind.

5. Flat or Horizontal Organizations

Flat or horizontal structures work well at small companies and startups, since these businesses don’t typically tend to have, nor do they need, multiple management levels. This structure is usually comprised of a founder at the top and a team of specialists around them who tend to have equal authority, at least initially.

The flexibility and intimacy of this structure can lead to rapid growth, at least at first. But as your enterprise grows it can become chaotic and you may need to consider adopting one of the more formal organization models.

Choose the Structure That’s Right for You and Learn How to Build Your Ideal Team

Now that you’ve learned the fundamentals of organizational structure, let Monster show you how to tackle all your management and hiring challenges with expert advice, helpful how-tos, and the latest HR and management news.

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It’s likely that you are already employing an ethical framework to guide your decision-making when it comes to issues such as privacy, fair play, pricing, negotiations and dealmaking, and more — whether you’re doing so consciously or not. But it’s worth thinking through your code of conduct more formally and considering, what your ethics are and why are they so important?

What Are Business Ethics?

The field of ethics as it relates to business consists of commonly held values and practices shared by people and organizations that are engaged in commerce. Ethical business practices tend to address common dilemmas and controversial subjects that arise in the course of professional endeavors.

In many instances, we can rely on the law to guide our conduct, but not always. “Legal” is not the same thing as “ethical,” after all. This means that as an employer and as an individual, you need to reflect on your core values and operate from a set of guidelines that will make up the ethical framework, or code of conduct, for you and your employees. The ethical framework you select should underscore your organization’s mission and core values.

Corporate governance, board and trustee behavior, fiduciary responsibilities, and employee management practices are all located on this spectrum. Once you’ve determined the business ethics that will guide your business, it can be used by everyone within your company to help guide how they treat their colleagues, your customers, and your competitors, partners, and vendors.

• Within a company culture, ethics constitute accountability and trust.
• Between businesses, they assure honesty and fairness in deal-making.
• For consumers, they help create a sense of trust that enhances the brand.

Ethics Within Company Culture

Increased investor awareness on environmental, social, and political issues puts reputations at stake, in both the financial markets and the marketplace, so it’s important to hear and respond to those voices. However, ethics within the work environment can be just as complex.

How do you apply consistent business ethics within your workplace and across your workforce? Start by focusing on creating an ethical workplace, starting with hiring the right talent. Integrity, honesty, and follow-through are all qualities to look for when hiring.

Employees follow business ethics when their company clearly demonstrates their importance. Treating your employees fairly goes a long way toward encouraging them to in turn treat customers, vendors and business partners, and one another with the same consideration.

The next step in building this kind of ethical culture is to create an ethics program. A complete program should touch on all business functions, from operations and human resources to marketing. Integrate your ethics program with business operations to make ethics part of the workflow. Your business ethics program should:

• Define the program’s mandate
• Monitor and mitigate risk
• Establish written policies and procedures
• Create a process for addressing allegations of misconduct
• Provide training and communications
• Reinforce behavioral expectations

Companies often look to management and employees to report any incidences of malfeasance they observe or experience. However, barriers within the company culture, such as fear of retaliation, may prevent this. Work toward improving transparency by reinforcing the idea that reporting misconduct is beneficial to the company and acknowledging whistleblowers’ courage.

Ethics Between Businesses

Business is often seen as a win-at-all-cost endeavor, but if you are interested in establishing your brand as a trusted leader in your sector or within your community over the long term, this attitude can be detrimental. This is especially true when it comes to dealings with other businesses.

Whether you are making a deal with a business partner, interacting with a competitor, or negotiating with a vendor, your company’s reputation can be strengthened if you operate in good faith. Though unethical businesses do on occasion thrive for a short while, the most ethical enterprises tend to flourish more consistently over time.

When it comes to deal-making, impeccable etiquette, integrity, and a respectful attitude toward the other party are more likely to yield a favorable outcome for all parties than duplicity. When negotiating on a joint endeavor, this might mean refraining from overpromising or holding back information that the other party might need to make an informed decision. This can also mean abiding by confidentiality agreements.

Ethics in the Consumer Marketplace

Today’s consumers are savvier than ever, especially when it comes to monitoring the ethical behavior of their favorite brands. Making poor ethical decisions or becoming enmeshed in scandal can cost you loyal customers and make it a lot harder to attract new ones. Consumer (and job seeker) scrutiny often goes beyond mere integrity, to include working conditions, environmental impact, and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).

To be successful in a marketplace where information about your company’s ethical shortcomings is just an internet search away, you need to commit to truth in advertising and marketing, transparency about costs and fees, and a real connection with the consumer.

But your reputational risk goes beyond the realm of bad choices. For example, a company using poor customer privacy procedures and protections might fall prey to a data breach, which can lead in turn to a significant loss of customers, erosion of trust, less competitive hires, and share price declines. This means that merely avoiding bad behavior may not be enough. Depending on the size of your operation, your ethical obligation toward your customer base may necessitate allocating appropriate investments to guard against the actions of bad actors outside your company, as well as within.

Assessing Your Ethics Policies

The final stage in implementing an effective set of guidelines for business ethics within your organization is to employ a benchmarking tool to determine where you are excelling and where you are falling short. From there, you can make the necessary adjustments to continue improving upon your ethical framework and enhancing the positive image it will undoubtedly earn you.

Put Your Business Ethics Knowledge Into Practice to Enhance Hiring and Profits

Learn how to cultivate an ethical environment and workflow, increase employee satisfaction, and bring your company into compliance with expert advice, useful how-tos, and the latest management and hiring news. Let Monster show you how to successfully and effectively lead your team.

Legal Disclaimer: This article is not intended as a substitute for professional legal advice. Always seek the professional advice of an attorney regarding any legal questions you may have.

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